As if life couldn't get more strenuous for the clan. A young sorcerer testing the limits of his powers and father's patience, a sudden career change and an attempted suicide round out another eventful night that's becoming frighteningly routine for the clan. Oh, and someone else gets knocked up as well and suffice it to say, she won't be too happy when she finds out.

All TGS characters used in this story are copyright TGS
staff, and are being used without permission.
They are not mine, nor do I ever claim so. No disrespect is intended or implied.

86 - "Complications"

"Life is just one
damned thing after another."

-
Elbert Hubbard

April 18th, 2002

"You left me!!"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

Mother and son stared each other down. Todd's brow was holding guard over stormy
gray eyes, and Rose's, they were more than defiant, and the silence lingered
between them as twenty long years seem to stretch even longer.

She'd awakened under his hateful glare three days ago, and
their relationship was thrust into a very new and very volatile breadth. There could've been an act of contrition on
either side, but with Todd carrying so much anger, it, inevitably, as most
things do, exploded. And they've been
at each other's throats ever since.

Rose turned over and avoided her gaze, seeking the comfort
of uncertainty.

With her stubborn silence and without the ability to further
rant, and consequently vent, Todd was forced to channel his anger into a wild
pace around the bed, and from the corner of her eye Rose watched every ranting,
convulsive movement.

Such determination, such anger bristling at his skin; he was
his father's son. They were more alike
than he'd ever know. "I never
thought..." she struggled, bringing Todd to a halt at the foot of her bed. His stare intensified, he was hanging on the
explanation that didn't want to come.
"I only told you...because I thought I was going to die. I never expected to wake up again."

He nodded. "Yeah,
how like you to escape your responsibilities again."

Lightning came to life inside her eyes, streaking resilience
across the glassy surface. "How dare
you." she hissed, a soft voice gone gravel and bitter. "I lived for you."

"Really."

"I was there almost every day of your life. I sacrificed what was left of my own
existence to help make sure yours was secure."

"Awwww, well I should just melt into a puddle of tears,
shouldn't I, Rose? Or should I call you
mom."

"Call me what you wish."

A leopard smile. "I've
done a lot of things, but I'm not going to insult a nun." He stood up from the near predatory stance
angled sharply across the bed, as something danced on young features. Was there another lie among the rest? "Christ, are you even a real nun?"

She bit her tongue, chewed her lip and stalled; this was
just more fuel for the fire. "No."

"Is there anything about you that's even remotely real?!"

"My love for you."

"Oh, bullshit!!" Todd spit on the one truly honest
answer she'd given him.

"You are everything to me!!" she hollered, leaning
forwards despite the lines of stitching holding together a patchwork
stomach. "Everything!! All my life, my dreams, everything I have
left...!" It trailed off into a moan,
lingering as the pain overtook her offensive, and the sutures having pulled at
her skin effectively ended her argument.

She recoiled into the pillows, wrapped her arms around her
stomach and turned to the side, hoping to alleviate some of the agony roaring
through her belly.

Todd took a cautious step forward. For the first time, there was true sympathy in his gaze. "Are...are you all right?"

"F-Fine." she managed, doubling up beneath the linens, like
she was trying to escape as far away as possible. If only she could. "I'm
tired."

As far as she was concerned, this interrogation was over.

Todd knew the tone all too well, and she'd just cut him off
at the head. "Fine." He turned and stomped out, as his mother
sobbed into her sheets.

****************************************

It grew quiet in the next room, the walls no longer rang
with voices and resentment.

Fox thought they were about to bulge and collapse in on her,
but, at least it provided a suitable diversion the past few nights, to deflect her
mind and brooding thoughts about her own mortality measured by a few simple
machines.

She sighed, forced back to her little gilded cage, dressed
in off-white and beveled, checked tile midway along the wall. She was growing sick of it. Sick of pitying eyes, lowered voices, sick
of every stray, commiserative thought she knew ran through each of her
visitor's minds.

Carmine intruded on her eyes, a wave of sword-slim hair, and
the simple gesture of tucking the follicles behind her ear easily tore a few from
her head. Surprise of this particular
symptom had long since passed, and not content with the few, she continued in
ghoulish interest. More strands
followed as she plucked them meticulously from her scalp, and stared at the
clump of faded red between her fingers.

Her hair was falling out.
She'd burst out with laughter if it weren't a wretched reminder of how
her gloriously fine-tuned body was betraying her.

So much time in the gym, the dojos, abroad in the remotest
countries surpassing so-called masters in months and even weeks, exertion,
toil, sweat, blood, all to watch lean muscle bleed away into bone. She was a machine breaking down, without the
strength to lift her own son into her arms.

Like the seed spurs of a dandelion, she blew the threads
from her palm, and clenched her empty fist, intent to pierce the skin with her
nails, waiting for the trickle of blood to crawl from underneath. If anything, to feel something.

And how fortuitous for her and her desiccated flesh for her
doctor to make his rounds.

She unclenched and dropped her hand to the bedside as Pierce
strolled in, clipboard under his arm.
"Sorry, I'm late."

A little joke. He'd
been punctual for every visit so far.

And as always, in her desolate state, Fox was
unimpressed. "I'm not going anywhere,
doctor."

"There are such things as wheelchairs and canes. I've already allowed you brief respites from
your bed whenever you wish to take them."

"I won't be paraded up and down the halls as some pale
corpse," her brow lowered, "I don't want those looks."

"What looks?"

"Such philanthropic pity."

He clicked his pen, and made a few notes. He thought encouraging her to get up and
about would lift her spirits, but it had the reverse effect. After all, she knew her fate without a foreseeable
cure; her body was coming apart at the molecular level. "I can assure you, Mrs. Xanatos, they look
at you as a woman standing up to an illness.
Simply, irrevocably. You are as
strong as you ever were in their eyes."

"Please, doctor, I said no."

He smiled and nodded, "All right," and continued with his
appointed duties. As he always did, he
checked over each piece of medical equipment with calm, almost clinical
objectivity, as if he was trying to make this seem as ordinary as possible.

She hated him for that.
If she could just reach him, if she could persuade enough strength to
lean over and send the side of her hand into the nerve ganglion on his neck,
she'd not break a sweat dropping him to the floor and watching him writhe with
the damage to his nervous system.

"And how are you feeling today, Fox?" he asked nonchalantly,
oblivious to the dissecting glare the tattooed woman washed over him.

"Getting progressively worse, aren't I, doctor?"

A flicker of defiance crossed a handsome face, beginning to
mar by the infancies of old age. Or
maybe it was conceit. "Not if I can
help it."

"Constants..." she muttered under her breath.

It was enough to catch his attention. He looked down on her. "Pardon?"

"There are constants in the universe, doctor, karma being
one of them."

He scoffed, as he returned to his apparatuses, "I'm sorry,
but I never believe diseases and maladies are the divine punishment for past
misdeeds."

"Are you dying?"

A hand struck the sheets on her bed, a forceful, bold hand
that earned her attention. She'd never
been intimidated by anyone, by any evolved creature, let alone a physician
playing with what little clout he was awarded.

But Alan Jefferson Pierce was more often compelling than
not.

"I've seen more death than you can imagine, Mrs. Xanatos,"
the labcoated man affirmed, "I've seen children no more than three years old
waste away as mothers cried and fathers put their fists through the
drywall. Fate doesn't specifically choose
victims, and it doesn't pass judgment with illnesses used as some sword of
retribution." A fortified breath angled
upwards, it shook the long salted bangs.
"It just happens," his voice took on a lower octave, his eyes a softer
hue, "we can't explain it, we can't rationalize it, we just deal with it. And I never thought you, out of anyone,
would fall prey to such a petty conception."

"Nor did I." she sighed in acquiescence, as she stared at
bony hands. The fire had been tamed, the
warrior sent under, she'd accepted her fate already, but perhaps far too soon.

"Listen, Fox, I..."

Whatever assurance he was going to give was suddenly drowned
out by a high-pitched scream from his lab.
He reacted with a sharp look.

With his attention focused on the door and the source of
the, alarm she guessed, Fox watched as he was almost hypnotically led from the
room.

****************************************

It was an odd sound.
Shrill, mechanical, but it at least afforded a sort of trail to follow
into the lab, growing louder as he grew closer.

Pierce waded through the mess he called his office, knocking
papers and other medicinal bobbles over in his attempt to find the source of
the odd, if not incredibly annoying siren.
And then, like a shot to the gut, a suspicion rose cold along his spine
as he wandered his gaze towards the far corner.

The cloning tube.

He darted towards the contraption rising near to the ceiling
with coattails like wings, and stopped so abruptly he nearly fell on it.

The alarm was definitely erupting from the tube, and the
display screen attached to the surface had doubled in speed the rate of
information. It had flowed with
constant vitals on the hybrid growing within, a continual reassurance of its
health. And now, those vitals were
erratic, the electrical activity without any discernible rhythm.

His nose wrinkled.
He could smell smoke in the air, noxious, like burning copper. No matter how faint, it was obvious against
the faithful disinfection of a hospital.
Another suspicion. "Damn..."

With sharp eyes, probing hands, he explored the sheath of
sterling metal quickly, frantically, seeking that toxic smell. If the computer repair program couldn't
detect the problem, there must be something else.

Reaching with his hand around the back he was searching
blind, until, his fingers found something, an area warmer than the rest.

And a puncture.

His mind would quickly coalesce all the facts into a single
certainty, a bullet hole, and straight through the casing.

A stray shot from the Guild firefight in the infirmary, it'd
torn between the metal folds of a seam and barely loosened the rivets. The innards were bleeding invisible wisps of
smoke, and raising fear in the good doctor and all his work to wed DNA into a single
being.

"Damn."
Grunting and groaning, he squeezed himself into the cramped space
between the wall and the massive tube large enough to hold a fully matured
Thailog and peeled back the small panel, rooting his fingers through the
labyrinth of colored wiring.

A few buried deep were scorched and others burned right
through; it was a wound that took due time to bleed and give any signs. He'd checked this thing over more than fifty
times after the Guild stormed the castle, and now, as the smoke thickened and
turned to a more ominous charcoal tint, he thought he just might lose another
one.

Enough innocent people had already died under his care.

"DAMN!!! Mother!!"

****************************************

Fox couldn't see from her vantage where Pierce had
disappeared to, but, whatever was screaming still screamed loud and unendingly.

It wasn't an alarm, it wasn't the knell for an unborn
child. To her, in her somewhat
heavy-eyed state, it was just another noise among the many. She couldn't discern one way or another.

All she knew, that shriek of machinery that had perfectly
enthralled the doctor was the distraction she was waiting for.

Fox made her bid for freedom from the jail of linens and
tubes and things gouging her skin, forcing liquids and steady medicines into
her, and more importantly, Pierce's steady, suffocating care by her husband's
apparent decree.

She dislodged the heart monitor, and pulled out the I.V.
needles, letting the clear solution dribble onto the linoleum. The covers were pulled back, and she dropped
her legs over the edge of the hospital bed.
Cold floor touched clammy skin, and the billionairess shivered and then
nearly collapsed under her own wretched weight. Her balance all but gone, her vision swimming with blurred lights,
she navigated by feel mostly, and familiarity of her suite, having stared at
these walls for so long.

Struggling along the wall, she crept out unseen amid the
chaos.

****************************************

At his wild call, Wyvern's spectral domestic materialized at
the doctor's side. Mother slithered up
behind him, every step a sinuous cadence as she glided over the floor without a
sound. "Doctor, I monitored the alarm."

"Mother, get me Lexington now!!" he screamed at her, throwing
civility to the winds. "I'm going to
call Trish!"

She'd expected such a lack of respect in the face of his
patient's impending death, but whether it was just that, or she was merely an
electronic servant in his eyes, she couldn't quite tell.

But as ordered, the hologram vanished to complete her
instructions, and Pierce dashed off and into the bedlam on the other side of
the room; there was a phone under this clutter somewhere. The papers, the chaos, the absolute mess, he
couldn't find anything. "Where's the
phone?! Where's the fucking phone?!!" In his panic, he started throwing things
from the countertops, hoping to stumble across what he so desperately
sought. "I've got to clean this
office!"

Left alone, as Pierce tore apart his think tank, Alexander
slowly swung his gaze around and returned his attentions to the tube.

He was eerie calm to the good doctor's distress.

Transcendental eyes inherited from Fox's impressive lineage,
they glistened viridian along the iris, piercing steel, and permeating through
the atoms and into the container. The
embryo was barely peanut-sized, encased in the artificial folds doing their
best to mimic a mother's womb. He could
discern a faint, mercurial rhythm echoing throughout the entire cylinder as
electrical pulses roamed through the hybrid, this unassuming tube tying
reproduction and technology together.

To anyone else, scientifically inclined or not, it was
bottled evolution at its most advanced, but the boy, he saw only life at its
most primal.

Even as a cluster of newly married cells, Alexander could
feel her, could feel the two distinct people from which she was created. They communed together in a primitive,
mournful language, reminiscent of whale song, sharing thought and cerebral
images through the connection between them as the child sorcerer created a
bridge into the fetus's mind.

You're going to be all right, he thought, as his
hands probed the slick casing. He had
an affinity for those like him.

Alexander's eyes glowed fathomless, seraphic emerald. The embryo, and the endometrial layer it
clung to, shivered, and melted into a different state of being, every cell
proficiently, simultaneously transformed to keep the delicate balance of life.

Flesh became light, and energy, and drifted towards his
fingertips pressed into the steel.
Alexander pulled back, and cupped his hands around the little ball of
pulsating radiance that trickled from the cylinder and fell right into his
palms.

Like holding liquid sun, it molded to every line etched
within his chubby hands, and swayed as he took off and down the hall.

****************************************

Alexander had rarely been allowed down this far into the
Eyrie, and persuading the elevator to take him didn't take much an influential
conjure on his part. With the morgue
and jail on this level, cold, stale air breathing from both ends, the steel
walls, high narrow passageways and stark lighting, the ambiance was
inconceivably sterile just a few floors below where he comfortably made his
home.

Peeking around an unmarked corner, he nearly dropped his
passenger in surprise, as two gargoyle-fashioned machines stared back at him.

The Steel Clan guardsmen on either side of the hall shored
up with the sight of the intruder, and had to markedly angle their red,
collective gaze down, considering he was barely three feet tall.

He emerged and casually started towards them. "Hi."

Programmed to recognize castle dwellers and those with the
proper clearance to pass, the winged sentinels merely moved to block the
entrance.

"Excuse me."
Alexander tried to push through, but the cumbersome things didn't budge,
like they were embedded in the floor.
The essence he held needed the new home he was trying to provide, and
soon. The rhythm drumming against his
skin was slowly fading. "I said," he
insisted, and the corridor walls, where steel met iron frame, shook between the
welds, "excuse me."

Threads of electricity coursed over their metallic skin, and
the automatons jerked with the sudden surge of energy running through their
internal reactors; they crumpled.

Collapsed into two smoking heaps, the boy walked through
unimpeded. "Thank you."

At the last cell, down near the end of the corridor, he
stood at the foot of the door, towering above his diminutive size. Even the handle was out of his reach.

Such heavy armor, better to keep the monsters locked inside,
the wall would provide somewhat of a challenge. With his hand he could feel several layers of steel shielding,
so, he merely altered his density. He
became a cloud of loosely attracted molecules, vibrating at a substantially
higher rate than the matter of the wall, and walked right through.

This simple trick to a fay of his breeding was, ironically,
child's play. Owen's teachings had done
well to unleash great power limited only with young Alexander's imagination.

He stepped through, and stopped short just inside.

Caught in the headlights, he was proved still just a child
in her presence. No sorcery, no
dominion, nothing to set him apart from simple, dawdling prey in the eyes of
the feral.

He'd forgotten how intimidating the creature was, even lying
unconscious across from him. Tangled
fire, claws and fangs, full breasts and a bestial symmetry evolved for hunting,
he thought her beautiful, and absolutely frightening. In their limited contact, in the few times they had run into each
other prowling serpentine stone halls, she'd always passed him an analytic
glance, like she was sizing both him up, and his potential, then moved on.

But to the boy who could destroy a city and simply cowered
in her presence and under that heavy, carnivorous glare, it seemed as if she
just didn't like him.

He moved forwards.

The room lit. A
collection of light took on a homonine form, and stood guard over the prone woman.

Mother stood cross and dictatorial, her lavender wings
mantled. "Alexander." The tone was commanding, hoping if anything
to scare off a child that completely disabled her sentries and thus, her
physical presence. Until reinforcements
arrived, she had no way to stop him.
"You are not allowed to be here."

"I know," he said, eyes true to his course as he slowly
moved forwards, watching for any indicative gesture of consciousness, "but I
gotta do somethin'."

"Alexander, she is extremely dangerous. Please leave immediately."

As expected of any Xanatos, he ignored the authoritarian and
walked straight through her projected image.

And as frustration tightened her horns, Mother asked of
herself why she even tried to keep these organic things from their
self-destructive path. No one ever
listened. With her replacement sentries
still too far away to affect any physical intrusion, all she could do was
observe Alexander regard the sleeping gargoyle with merited caution, and then
kneel beside her.

Hovering over the creature snug in her wings, he tipped his
chaliced hands down and allowed the little ball to roll from his fingers and
onto taught flesh. It bounced like a
marble under ensorcelled eyes, spiraled towards the crevasse of her stomach and
eventually, like water running down a drain, dissolved into the skin.

The recipient twitched.

Pores rose on a terrain of reclining blue, and the body
shifted as the womb quickly and strenuously transformed to hold the intruder to
its system. She groaned, sneered, and
rolled thunder over her tongue. The
steel plating underneath them both trembled with a sub-harmonic growl, and
Alexander readied himself.

For claws, or talons, for a vicious swipe of her
knife-tipped hands.

But much to his relief, with an anxious finger rimming his
lips, she eventually fell quiet, and the embryo took root.

Mother had seen much since her initial activation, but this,
this was truly remarkable.
"Fascinating."

****************************************

"How long has it been like this?"

Reminiscent of being cross-examined, Pierce answered again,
near-hysteria getting the best of him.
"A few minutes!"

"And what exactly happened?"

"I don't know!
The vitals were all over the place, and now they've gone completely
dead."

With Angela watching over his shoulder, Lexington, playing
savior where Pierce couldn't, was plugged in directly to the tube through every
available cybernetic port. Broken,
charred wires lay across his palms, and he mourned them appropriately. "These wires were supplying power to the
oxygen feed, the embryo's going to drown in its own amniotic fluid."

He was being aggravatingly slow. Didn't he already realize...?
"How fast can you repair this thing?"

Information scrolled faster than an organic brain could
process, and in the chaos of the streams, Lexington plucked one important fact
from the lines of instructional code.
He shook his head with the revelation.
"It doesn't matter."

"That child has only a few minutes survival time without the
exact measurement of oxygen and nutrients!!
So please enlighten me to why you think it doesn't matter!"

Lexington blinked.
Everything and the world often reflected in such large eyes, and now
confusion, and then futility did as well, and as deeply.

And Pierce misinterpreted that blank look as something
more. His heart didn't take a
beat. "Please don't tell me..."

"What?!" Pierce
double-checked the monitor, and when that didn't respond, he punched in his
personal security code and opened a portion of cylinder armor that slid away
near the top. A small portal afforded a
magnificent view, better than any scanning tool he owned.

But, where should have been a perfectly cradled womb, there
was nothing there, just the artificial amniotic solution refreshing an empty
shell. Unlike a biological pregnancy,
the tube was not designed to miscarry a damaged or dead fetus.

It should have been there.
"Jesus, where the hell is it?!"

"I took it."

Pierce snapped his head around so quick it nearly broke his
neck. There was Alexander, standing at
the threshold to the door, all too conspicuous. "Took it...? Where
is it?!"

The telltale traces of guilt were evident, but, hidden in the
youthful lineaments, was veiled pride.
"I put it inna safe place."

"A safe place?"

Chilling realization trickled through Angela's ridges, set
her jaw and shook her wing-struts, by memory of a previous discussion and
Alexander's penchant for somehow knowing before they did. "Oh, dear."
She rested a hand on Pierce's shoulder, her talons gently pressing into
the fabric of his stained labcoat.
"Doctor, isn't there only one other conceivable place that child could
grow...?"

"Oh, dear."

****************************************

"I don't believe this..." Pierce sighed, his breath a fog on
the cell's tiny window. Running fingers
through the unkempt hair hanging across his brow, the doctor was a little more
than thunderstruck with the newest development in his smallest patient's
care. "I don't goddamned believe this."

Brooklyn was behind him, watching the occupant shift in her
sedated sleep. There was a bulge to her
midsection now, small, inconspicuous at first glance with her sinewy, chiseled
physique, but there. The swelling would
soon go down as the shock to her system passed. "This...may complicate things."

The human snorted.
"You know, it's hard enough to do my job when my hospital's being
overrun by mask-wearing, xenophobic murderers or I'm seeing people jumping out
windows to their deaths, but...this..."

Brooklyn nodded at his frustration, as he shared it, and
gleaned his eyes into the cell.

Curled into a haphazard ball of wing, Demona was still
sleeping, and pregnant. Without her
even knowing, she was carrying the hopes and dreams of the clone she
practically loathed with every fiber of her being and all, he still couldn't
quite believe it, through Alexander's meddling hands.

And everyone behind the sealed door to her cell knew she'd
be more than angry when she found out.
As the child grew, she'd enlarge, and in her quasi-deranged state,
Demona was capable of anything, short of, at least they hoped, ripping it from
her stomach with her own claws.

They didn't want to find a trail of blood scrawled across
the floor, leading from her to the dissevered baby like an accusing finger.

Angela shivered at the mental image. "My near-psychotic mother is pregnant with
my cloned sister's child." she made plain in a mumble, leaning against the
other side of the door beside Pierce.

Brooklyn shrugged his shoulders, hoping to make light. "Congratulations?"

Her features darkened, and he swore, when faced with
Angela's livid expression through the window's reflection, it was Demona looking
back under the forcefully knotted brow.
"That's not funny."

****************************************

"This isn't funny." Brooklyn muttered, adjusting his feet in
the massive oak table as he leaned back in his chair.

There were murmurs and nods all around him as the assembled
clan were quick to agree.

Of all places, they'd ended up in the comfort of the
castle's kitchen, where doctor Pierce cradled the lifeblood of every laborer
awake past what would be considered sane.
Taking solace in his coffee, double strong and black, as sugar or cream
as he often stated would dull its effectiveness, he allowed himself a reprieve
before it all crumbled back into reality.

"How the hell did that kid get through the security
measures?" the new leader demanded, as much a question to himself than to
anyone there.

"Intangibility. He
walked through the wall." Mother tendered, and as always,
impassive. "I do not have a defense for
that."

"Then," the practiced look, as well as the responsibility,
fell on Lexington, "let's make one."

"Well, I guess I could electrify the layers in between the
walls."

"Like that'll do a lot to stem the kid who tied together
part of the omniverse." Broadway scoffed, barely able to cross his arms over
such a large chest. "Energy is energy,
remember? And he wields it like we
breathe oxygen."

Brooklyn started shaking his head. "Sorcery isn't thrust on the user with every latent ability fully
realized, it's learned. And
slowly. Meticulously. If it won't stop him, or anyone like him,
say, massive, alternative killing machines who want to get their hands on
Demona..." He dwelled for dramatic
effect on his fan-eared brother; it seemed the most likely candidate for his
second was getting used to playing the opposing voice. "Well, at least it'll slow them down."

"I think energy shields and robot guards are a little out of
either Alex or Goliath's leagues."

"If you have any better ideas, bro, I'd like to hear
them."

An indeterminate growl leached from the corner, where eyes
gleamed a presence, and a fiery sigh denoted impatience. The effect loomed through the entire expanse
of the kitchen, quieting some, silencing others.

Separate from the rest, as he often liked it, waiting,
listening, fuming, Shadow had been intent on Delilah, watching through the
crowd, above the bickering to archaically prove a point. Curled on the far countertop, her wings
slung limp over sagging, lifeless shoulders, she seemed on the fringe of a
conversation that revolved around her child.

He didn't even know if she was listening anymore, lost in a
world somewhere far from this one.
Perhaps where the pain of simply living didn't exist.

It seems his former lover had been stunned into a reclusive
silence, and though he knew this just may ruin a cunningly crafted reputation,
he thought he'd return the topic of discussion to what truly mattered. "What about the child?"

They all looked to Pierce.

"I've done as best a thorough examination as I can." he
answered, especially while pressed under a particular russet glare, that seemed
more potent than fire, or the entire weight of the Eyrie on his chest. "With the preliminary tests, the embryo
seems healthy, and is growing on the gargoyle equivalent of an endometrium in
Demona's womb. Alex seems to have
transplanted and suitably adapted the layer by...magic, I suppose..." He rolled his eyes at the word, his bane,
kneading his temples. "But I'm more
worried about Demona's daily transformations."

"D'mona won't hurt th' baby when she turns into a lady..."

It came from beneath the edge of the kitchen table, and as
Pierce leaned over, a single brow inclined in Alexander's direction. "How?"

He was staring past the doctor, intent on something out of
his reach. "Magic."

Exasperated, Pierce threw his hands up in the air as
something rolled from his lips, thankfully inaudible with such a young and
impressionable audience. "Magic, again
with the goddamned magic."

"Yeah, magic, can I hav'a cookie?"

He swapped his gaze between the expectant little sorcerer,
and the, for now, unreachable trove of the cookie jar in the middle of
the stone-rimmed table. "Oatmeal or
chocolate chip?"

"Choc'lit."

Pierce scooped out the cookie and handed it to a grateful
Alexander. "Has anyone told you that
you shouldn't really be doing things like stealing unborn children from their
cloning tubes or making nice doctors age prematurely?"

Already halfway through his treat, the redhead shrugged.

"Xanatoses...arrogance must be congenital." Pierce muttered
under his breath. "And wipe those
crumbs off your face."

Claws tapping anxiously on the oak, wanting to know more if
only for her sister's sake, Angela interjected, "The child, doctor, will it
form an egg?"

The overworked doctor took a swig first, and breathed in ecstasy
the bitter warmth of roasted coffee beans.
"I don't know, there's too many factors inherent now to make a
determinate guess. The child's one
quarter human, and has been transplanted into a gargoyle with daily human
transformations. That could have a
major impact on the growth. Whether or
not an eggshell will form..."

"Mother is a creature that has been touched by magic,
frequently in her lifetime," Angela advised, "and those transformations could
have more implications than you think."

"Plus whatever Alex may have done to it..." Brooklyn threw
in from the side.

"It could develop an egg, and Demona will give birth in
about six months, or...the child will develop in a more...humanlike
fashion."

"With Annika's pregnancy, there's a possibility a membrane
will form, thick, but not as rigid as a gargoyle eggshell. The same could happen here." Pierce closed his eyes and met the bridge of
his nose with his thumb and forefinger, as if trying to fend off an emerging
headache. "God, this was so much
simpler before I met you people." Upon
opening, his slip of the tongue had awarded him more than several mildly
irritated expressions. And of course,
Othello's interminable grimace, and Shadow's dark sneer. He smiled, and delved back into his cup,
eyes skirting cautiously along the rim.
"No offense."

"Pierce!"

The man in question nearly choked on the last, ground-rich
mouthful. "Trish?"

Having charged into the kitchen with all the grace of an
elephant, and all the volatility of dynamite, Trishia Weathers leaned on the
doorframe to catch her breath. Her hair
tied up, leaving a few, purposefully hanging strands, and wrapped in a satin
sleeveless and matching scarf, she was dressed a little more elegantly than an
on-duty resident. "I got your call!"
she screamed breathlessly, glasses hanging off the edge of her nose. "Why aren't you in the infirmary?! Where's the baby?!!"

"Situation's been taken care of." Under the gun, Pierce offered up a freshly poured mug. "Coffee?"

One in the background cleared her throat, and hoped the
human would be careful.

"I left a date for this," she directed towards him, still
holding that steaming mug as more a shield, "a very handsome, well-dressed date
who had already promised to pay for dinner, and who I've been trying to go out
with for the past three weeks with the hospital being overrun, so this had
better be important!"

"Sit down."

"What?!"

He pushed out an empty chair with his leg. "Just...sit down, and listen."

****************************************

Angela trailed softly after her white-haired sibling. Delilah had simply left, without a word, but
the expression she donned was more than enough to elicit a quick pursuit.

"Delilah?"

She stopped, and could sense Angela's eyes boring through
her back. Her wings were tucked high
and close, a moody posture. She was
sure the question would inevitably come, so she answered anyway. "Everyone's being so clinical it's making me
sick!"

If Angela had closed her eyes, there would be no distinction
from her mother's tone. But it was just
one of a thousand facets that made this clone so captivating. "They're all trying to deal with this. Would you rather they panic?"

"I'd rather they react." she snapped. "At all.
But all they do is analyze, question, discuss." Her talons swiped at the wall, scoring the
limestone in three perfect lines and barely sating what pushed at her flesh
from the inside out. "I hate the fact
that what we live through every day has desensitized us, I hate living where
death and destruction is so commonplace we've all become numb. I hate this!"

Angela nodded. She
too had often felt the exact same way in this stage of her life, and shared the
clone's outlook.

They were sisters by the awesome, and conflictingly fearful phenomenon
of genetics. They were kin by the wings
they wore, the affinity they shared between one small, persistent clan, and
under a surname that decidedly brought them closer than they ever thought. And every time Angela looked at her, watched
her, spoke with her, Elisa and Demona, the two components of her being, easily
swapped between dominance and submission of her emotional state.

"It'll be all right." she said, if anything, offering a
supportive shoulder.

She didn't know how to answer. Anything would come off as facetiously hollow, even if she
genuinely meant it. "You're right. I suppose I can't give that assurance. I could try but..." Angela took a hesitant step forwards. "I would try, but we both know exactly what
could happen, and I won't insult you by blindly saying otherwise."

A mewl went soft through flared nostrils, "Good. I've been lied to enough in my lifetime."

"What I am going to tell you is that we are sisters. We are all that's left of a very exceptional
family we were lucky to have."

"Please don't..."

"I didn't say I was finished." Angela cut her off mid protest,
something dark and transfixing about her tone.
"You can hide away and wallow, but you will never maintain some stubborn
segregation only because you're in pain.
We're all in pain."

She crossed her arms beneath her chest, and stooped wide
hips. "Your child has been transplanted
to a psychotic's womb? I've been
torn from my own universe!! I'm
forced to contend with a mate that barely looks at me, let alone acknowledges
our love. My father, my step-mother, my
baby sister could either be dead, or thousands of miles or years away!"

Delilah lowered her eyes, sound purring from her throat.

"But I won't run away, and I won't hide. I'll meet whatever this world's going to
throw at me with a growl." Angela
goaded her sister's gaze back up with two fingers urgently pointed to her own. "And so will you. Our clan still thrives, and everything we have fought for,
everything we've lost, will balance out in the end. It will, it must."

Delilah simply stared at her. "You are such a hippy."

"And you play the bitch well." she laughed, and melodiously,
glad she could share it with the only remaining Maza in the castle. "There is some Demona in you, isn't
there?"

"I know." And with
that, Delilah roamed into the distance, Angela watching until she faded into
the immensity of the castle. That timid
clone was a woman all her own now.

"Angela."

She looked up, searchingly, into the conduit of circuitry
and lighting embedded within the arched stone roof. Mother's phantom voice afforded no sense of direction. "Yes?" she answered warily.

"You've received a phone call. I've routed it to the closest phone, holding on line two."

After everything that'd come out of the outside to threaten
her very life, especially recently, she was a little more than
distrusting. "Who?"

"She's identified herself as one of your mother's
employees."

"Oh no."

At that exact moment, a fleeting thought intruded; if she
were in her own universe, would all of this still be happening. It didn't matter now; that dimension and
every living soul was just a memory and errant floating atoms, and here she
was, trapped.

She stared at the phone on the credenza, and the flashing
arrow beside the waiting line, and she knew exactly what this was.

Nightstone Unlimited had been without its founder and
driving force for three weeks now, and Angela had lingered on an answer to give
them as Dominique Destine's only existing relative. Another accident, her mother languishing in a coma, near death,
on respiration, it was the only excuse that seemed to partially satisfy the
higher-ups in Demona's personnel, and justify the complete and total
disappearance of one of the richest women on the eastern seaboard without even
a headline.

They seemed skeptical, with absolutely no wreckage, no filed
police report, and no word of mouth in a city of more than a million.

"I suppose I've been expecting this." Picking up, she held the receiver to her ear
with delicate talons and released the line.
"Hello?"

"...Angela Destine-Maza?..."

An obviously human name, she was surprised her mother would
pay so much attention to detail by even acknowledging Elisa. "Yes."

"...It's very late, I hope I'm not disturbing you?..."

"Not at all. I'm a
night person."

"...As says in your mother's file, good. Miss Destine-Maza, my name is Bianca
Cartier, I'm calling on behalf of the board of trustees at Nightstone Unlimited,
and I'll try to be succinct. Your
mother has left explicit instructions concerning you..."

"Really." Angela sighed.
What did she do now, she wondered.

"...She left some...very odd directives for fear of any
illness or accident. One, singular
directive actually, and one that I was a little more than surprised to
discover, but I suppose it makes perfect sense knowing Ms. Destine..."

This Bianca was droning; there seemed to be a little more
resentment than calm, cool facade.
"Please, be succinct."

"...Yes, my apologies.
With your mother incapacitated, and the fact we have not personally
heard from her in three weeks, I have been instructed to inform you of the fact
you are now sole beneficiary to her company and subsequent fortune..."

"Sole beneficiary?
And just what does that mean?"

"...Well, until your mother's return..." she paused,
as if it pained her to continue, "...you are now owner and CEO of
Nightstone..."

Angela dropped the phone, ill and slack-jawed.

"...Miss Destine-Maza?...Are you there?..."

****************************************

"Never...remembered these halls being...so long..." Fox
wheezed, struggling along the grooved wall.
She'd already made it this far into the castle, and had so far slinked
unseen through the serpentine passageways each drifting into another.

Her ears tuned for any sound, she heard movement, and froze,
becoming as stone as the ramparts.

A column of shadow along the floor heralded a presence
wandering the same junction where several halls intersected, and Fox, with her
body unable to react as quickly, barely had time to escape back into the
corridor as the figure emerged into view.

It was Delilah, having followed her silhouette.

Fox held her breath and clung to the wall; that damned
gargoyle was far too light on her feet for such a stalwart creature. Waiting blind, her only clue was that
well-known scrape of talon against stone, the paths through Wyvern a carpet of
tiny swirl marks.

The clone slowed and, with something having triggered her senses,
sniffed the air.

Residual scents were a brume along the air-conditioned
breeze of the castle and all the arteries from north to south, stirring and
fusing and making tracking any one person difficult. She dismissed what passed under her nose for an old fragrance,
and then continued on.

And
Fox released, pressing her clammy forehead against the stone as she exhaled
with the danger of being discovered long passed. The last thing she wanted was the imminent sympathy she'd receive
or idle chatter about how she was 'doing'.

Her eyes went up, narrowing to better see where the end lay
in that gloom down the hall. She was so
tired, but almost there. She allowed
herself a short respite, and, with a hand braced to keep her from collapsing,
hobbled into the distance.

****************************************

Todd walked back in to the infirmary; to be more precise, it
was a brisk, determined march that quickly turned into a feral stride. His path was direct but blind, as something
had led him back here more by instinct than choice, and, after having irately
wandered the castle halls above, he now trawled through the briar of hospital
equipment.

Rose was pulled from a light and haunted rest by footsteps
along the linoleum. From under heavy
lids, she found her son pacing in a concentric half-circle around her bed,
knocking away any medical paraphernalia unfortunate enough to be in his path.

The racket was nearly enough to wake Bluestone from his
coma.

He had things on his mind, questions he needed answered, and
damnit, if he had to cause her to bleed through her stitching, he'd get those
answers. From the other side of the
room, it came off as a growl, "What happened twenty years ago?"

It was that same catechistic question that had been often
repeated over the past few days. And
evaded just as many times.

"I don't want to talk about it." Rose whispered, gripping
into the folds of her pillow.

"Damnit, yes you will!" he screamed in response, making a
rush towards the foot of her bed, looking as if he'd attack her. "You owe me!!"

"I owe you nothing."

"You owe him twenty years." a new voice cut in, as Annika
appeared at the infirmary door, trying to play the mediator. "You owe him his family, his identity, or an
explanation at the very least."

She was grace and calm and everything her husband wasn't,
and just maybe she could inch her talons through such stubborn armor.

Assaulted from two sides, Rose had nowhere to go but deeper
into her inclined bed. "I told you...I can't...!"

Todd pitched forwards again, until a strong hand braced
against his chest; it was like running into a brick wall. With the speed and long stride of a gazelle,
Annika was there between him and the bed, holding him back with incredible
strength. "Don't."

His gaze was still impressed against Rose, a straight bead
uninterrupted. "Don't what?"

"Do something you'll regret."

"Annika, this doesn't concern you!"

Eyes flamed red at his outburst and the anger misdirected
towards her. "Yes, it does and it always
will. Or has that ring you wear around
your neck gotten a little light?"

Idly caressing his wedding ring through his shirt, worn on a
simple chain necklace and sometimes like a noose, he eased off from her hand
with a few back-peddling steps. Annika
circled the bed, coming to Rose's side.
The nun was a little intimidated, by her proximity and eerie composure,
by a formidable creature trimmed with claws and fiercely loyal to her boy.

But Annika merely grabbed for her hand, a soft touch that
dispelled any fear, and pressed Rose's palm against her stomach. "Feel deep, Rose, feel beyond the flesh and
bone. If not Todd, then you owe it to
your grandchild."

She nearly popped her sutures with the sharp breath; she
hoped she'd misheard the young woman.
"Grandchild..." she echoed wide-eyed, and then looked up at Annika. Her daughter-in-law was wearing sincerity on
her features like a statue. "You're pregnant?"

"Another miracle graces Wyvern." she joked. "You can either be a part of our
family, or not."

Her eyes returned to taught flesh, her fingernails tracing
the whispers of muscle flexing with every breath. Something was growing her hand underneath as it did twenty-four
years ago. She'd imagined grandchildren
before her blissful life was torn away, and the contact was enough to rip the
memories out from a forced seclusion.

"You'll eventually heal, Pierce will release you and you'll
go back to a desolate life of hiding away behind such a cunning alias."

Annika shuddered, and Rose quickly pulled away; her fantasy
was just that, nothing more to give her but the painful yearning for a simpler
time.

"Second chances are often rare, Rose, and I'd think you're
close to losing this one."

Second chances, the gargoyle couldn't realize what that
entailed. To take back what was taken
from her was to relive a series of events that nearly destroyed all she was and
used to be. "I remember..." she
whispered hoarsely, staring at the stomach laid bare by a mid-riff tunic. "Being pregnant with you, Todd. All my hopes, every fancy I'd once had
fulfilled, and it was all taken away in a single night. It haunts my dreams. I remember above anything else, over the
tearing and grinding of metal, over the roar of gasoline-fueled fire, I
remember your crying."

Annika looked over her shoulder, and found an expression
crossing her husband's ornery mug much like he'd react if someone had kicked
him in the teeth. With the gargoyle's
prodding, a crack had indeed been opened into something he'd had been hoping
for for twenty long, agonizing years.

"Joseph Hawkins."

Todd took special heed to the name. "What?"

"Your father. He was
a counterintelligence agent for the FBI, and...he was investigating a series of
murders he thought were orchestrated by the very government he faithfully
served." She shifted and lay on her
back, intentionally keeping her gaze up and on the ceiling. She didn't think she could continue with her
son's accusing gaze bathing her. "When
you were only three years old, we were driving home through a bad storm. You were in the backseat, and nervous. Every few minutes I'd look back and make
sure you were all right. You were
staring through the windows, at the rain, entranced by something in the
lightning-lit distance."

Rapt, Todd moved forwards, slowly approaching the side of
the hospital bed; to hear her speak for the first time as his mother was an
eerie sensation. He took the seat
alongside, and thundercloud eyes so much like her husband's urged Rose to continue.

"Then out of nowhere...something attacked us. We thought them human, but they were more
like some sort of things, jumping onto the car and tearing through the
metal." Memories were flooding back
with every growl and inhuman, guttural cry so vivid she'd swore they were in
the room with her. The fear, the
adrenaline, the singular concern for her children, it was all coming back. "Your father tried to keep control,
but...they were everywhere, smashing the windows all around us, denting the
metal. I remember him fighting
something off with his left hand, until he cried out in pain. They cut him, slashed him, and he
lost control. The car hit the
guardrail..."

She swallowed.

"We went over. I
remember...reaching for you, and the expression on your face. I caught your hand, until, the car hit the
base and tore in half, and you were pulled away from me. We were separated, and I was sent tumbling
from my seat."

Searching his memories, Todd hoped something would've been
sparked into any sort of clarity, but it was still frustratingly, infuriatingly,
all a blank. It'd been erased by the
sheer trauma of a three-year-old boy flung from an exploding car.

But something else nagged in the back of his head. Things? Maybe her memory was playing tricks with the facts. Maybe her fear made simple men into
something more.

"I remember waking up in a puddle of water and blood...there
was fire all around us...and all I could hear was your crying. Joseph was gone, I couldn't see past the
wreckage or the flames...he was gone...dead, or lost in the flames..." The last words were drowned in the back of
her throat. If anyone else were to so
casually relate how they'd lost their lover, they'd be hardpressed to continue
as well. "...he was gone..."

The story that had engrossed its audience dried, died and
left off in an ostensible midpoint.
There was more, there had to be, but with Rose's inability to continue,
it withered into reluctance.

Todd could see how much this was hurting her, but, he could
see the dark lines of tears over burned skin, but, he needed to
know. He was due. "Then what?"

"Todd, I..."

"Please."

With a fortifying breath she continued. "I-I crawled through the muck, trying to
find you. But I couldn't...I didn't
have the strength. I don't remember much
after, but I must have passed out. I
awoke in a hospital, apparently there for days, in and out of consciousness."

"I remember demanding for my son and husband to the first
person I saw. It was Abel Sykes, an FBI
agent that had been your father's friend for years, and...coupled with that
damned sympathetic gaze, h-he told me Joseph's body hadn't been found, and that
you were taken without his jurisdiction and placed in a children's home. I was ready to tear all their machines from
my body to come find you, but he stopped me.
It seems I had been secluded from all but a few select doctors. No one else knew I was still alive."

"Apparently, agent Joseph Hawkins had been branded a
fugitive by the FBI for several charges including drug-trafficking, bribery,
and leaking government documents to overseas interests, but Sykes didn't
believe it. He'd hidden my survival
from the bureau, and in less than four days, someone had completely erased our
very lives. They'd emptied out our
home, seized any sort of records, everything of our family had been wiped from
the public consciousness to better change and control the facts that implicated
your father. If I revealed myself, I
could've been charged with aiding and abetting a known criminal, or
killed...just as Joseph was. So, by
Sykes' order, I was forbidden from ever coming in direct contact with you."

"But why wasn't I taken out of the home if I was in danger?"

She smiled, and gently shook her head among the woodland
strands. "You weren't. If whoever did all this wished you dead as
well, they would have killed you as soon as your identity was revealed by the
social workers. It was your father they
wanted. A three-year-old boy didn't
pose any threat, especially one so traumatized that he'd developed some sort of
selective amnesia."

He kneaded his fingers to a lined brow. This was all so unreal, like he'd
lived an entirely different life. "I
don't remember anything."

"Which is why...I left you." she said, voice tinged with
regret. "Left you in that home so you
could start anew without the baggage of your father or I, and have the life you
were meant to."

Todd looked down at his hand, having reflexively clenched
into the sheets. An old anger was
conflicting with a new truth. "I needed
a mother."

"And I couldn't provide you with that."

"You could have at least told me about my parents, my
family. I didn't know anything!" He stood up, towering over her. The anger had returned. "You could have taken me away from
there!!"

"And do what? Kidnap
you and hide for the rest of our lives?
Take what second chance my son had and destroy it by going underground
and looking over my shoulder every minute of every day?

"It would've been worth it."

"I was considered a fugitive either under the false charges
or Sykes' orders regarding any sort of contact." She tried to appeal to him through her expression of sorrow, and
repentance, and hoped he'd see just how much it pained her. She shook her head, lazily blinking. "No, I couldn't do that to you. You deserved a life outside of the chaos
ours had become, you deserved more than I could give you."

"I spent most of my life alone in an orphanage!"

"And look at you now," Rose countered, "strong,
self-sufficient, a hero, married, soon to be a father."

A calming breath.
"Then where the hell did you go?"

Her shoulders moved, her version of a shrug. "Away," she answered distantly, "across the
country, the world, constantly moving, drifting without a purpose. But no matter how far I traveled and tried to
escape, I had left my soul back here. I
was dying, and couldn't stay away from you any longer. After a year and a half, and facing either
severe federal charges or my own death, I returned to New York to find a
position in your children's home that was operated by the church."

Todd slumped back down into his chair. "So you posed as a nun."

"A position not too many people would want to impersonate,
if anything to be forced to live their lifestyle, and with their small and
steadily dwindling staff, I was accepted quickly without the requisite
questions. I was able to watch over
you, watch you grow into the man you are now."

A smile managed to stroke along her lips, a guilt-ridden
gesture caught between her love for her son and her own self-reproach. "Call it selfishness, I suppose. But, it seemed the accident had done well to
nurture determination and stubbornness.
It was the seminal factor that made you what you are today."

"Is that why, as I started getting older, you drifted away?"

"You drifted away from me, Todd. You didn't need me anymore. I'd done my best to help instill that
independence you wield so greatly, and in doing so, gradually removed myself
from your life without even realizing before it was too late." She looked at him so intensely he felt his
very soul under her velvet-hued scrutiny.
She saw strong, familiar lines in his face, the same flint eyes of
course, and the jaw, even though Todd's was hidden under his goatee, it was
Joseph's, square and true. "You are
just like your father, do you know that?"

"My dad?"

Her eyes dulled, radiating the same pain as it did then,
when simple words had never cut so deeply.
"He was never found...according to the forensics team, the fire was so
hot...it could've completely destroyed his body, and wouldn't have left any
remains..."

Silence fell, and Todd digested.

So this was it, the simple narrative he'd dreamed of all his
life, delivered in less than ten minutes.
He didn't quite know how to feel right now. He lifted from his chair in a dreamlike state, and walked deeper
into the infirmary, stepping between the shadows and light.

Annika watched him closely.
She watched every little gesture he made, ripples along his skin,
dilation of pupils, waiting for any sort of signal that he was about to
explode. But, he seemed more lost than
angry, more relieved than indignant. He
was shell-shocked for sure.

But she didn't know if the truth would hurt him more than
that blank, anodyne past she thought he'd left far behind when they first
met. "Are you all right?"

Todd's answer was carried over half a laugh and a clearing
of his throat. "Besides the fact I
think I'm going to puke...I don't know..."

"Well, now you know."

"Now I know..." he echoed vaguely, reaching into his back
pocket for his wallet, and the photo contained within. He fished out the Polaroid he'd managed to salvage,
and two faceless bodies were given dimension and form.

He connected with Rose, his mother wondering just what had
stolen his longing glance. He walked
forwards and silently outstretched his hand.

Hesitantly, she took the offered photograph, treating it as
gently as did her son; it must mean a great deal.

"This was all I had of you."

As soon as she saw the photo, there was an almost visible
flush to her skin. She knew it well;
she knew every detail of that day, the fence and background, every smell in the
air, the young and energetic boy squirming in her arms. The scorched and melted photograph was as
crisp and clear in her mind as if it were yesterday. "You were two months shy of your first birthday in this photo."
she said quietly, running her fingernails across the infant image of her
son. "Your father's new camera, he'd
just learned to use the timer."

He watched her marvel at the simple photograph much like he
did when young and under the sheets of a darkened room, when the other children
slept, and when he just couldn't let go of an elusive past. "Tell me about my father."

****************************************

It'd taken so long.

To traverse the Eyrie and then the castle with her weakened
body, and avoiding anyone wandering the halls, it'd taken more than an hour to
get up here where winds blew hard and whistled serenely through the stony
aigrette of castle turrets.

It used to take minutes with her august stride, and the
infirmity just fueled her frustration, and her intent.

Fox lurched onto the courtyard, and breathed deep of the
fresh air her hospital suite didn't quite allow. There was sound here, resonance and life among the sterile stone,
bleeding upwards from the earth, and she indulged selfishly.

But regrettably there was something else here, leaning
against the stones on the far end, and as always fated to ruin the tranquility.

Nicole St. John stared outwards into the saw-toothed island
contours alpine and half-lit, where, in every corner and crook and cranny
below, there was a story aching for the proper spin. Either on the damaged section of Manhattan glibly christened the
Hole, or the rise in crime rate, or the upsurge in tales of superstition and
urban monsters, she was forced to watch her career slowly fade and die with
such a feeding frenzy for even the most novice of up-and-coming reporters.

"So much pain, destruction, death," she waxed poetic, in her
own particular, obnoxious style, "so many reporters getting my
stories. I could've had a
Pulitzer." She turned away, sick of it
all and her lavish prison. "Damn
gargoyles."

Upon turning around, to spend another night moping through
the castle halls, she was confronted with, what she deemed, an odd sight among
an odd place. Fox Xanatos, clad in
hospital gown and bare feet.

The two women stared each other down.

"What the hell?" Nicole exclaimed in shock. She'd rarely seen this particular half of
her jailors outside of that restricted hospital suite, and the woman that stood
in front of her was a far cry from the predator that, in the past, had
skillfully evaded any sort of interview.
"Well, you're up and out of bed.
Aren't you supposed to be dying?"

Fox moved past her, butting her shoulder against the
reporter's. She was feigning this last
bout of strength; inside, she was waning.
"Not quite yet."

Finely plucked eyebrows sharpened, knotting together with
her obvious reciprocated hatred for the billionairess. "Where are you going?"

She disgorged steam from between clenched teeth. Of all places, the annoying little bother
had to block her path here, so close to the end. But, on the upside, it wasn't a gargoyle with inhuman strength,
or, more importantly, fast reflexes.

Fox pivoted, and with the momentum behind her jabbed an open
palm straight towards Nicole's unguarded face.
Nicole could only contort her features before she ricocheted from the
butt-end of a well-aimed hand.

CRACK.

She went down, holding both hands across her nose, and
screaming in pain. "Oh...CHRIST!!!"

If at full strength, Fox could've pushed a shard of bone
into her brain.

Luckily, all she did was bruise the bridge of her
antagonist's nose, and spill a lone, glossy trail of blood, enough to get the
reporter off of her back until she did what she felt she had to.

She turned around, and headed for the edge that spilled into
rising industrial light and distant stars.
There was serenity in between, where she longed to fly. For so long, she'd wished to touch them, feel
them, caress them, and maybe, in those last seconds as she freed herself from a
dying mortal cage, they'd be just in reach.

"Agghhkk..." Nicole
was snorting blood, her nose completely filling with fluids as the telling red
lines curled over her upper lip.
"...fricking psychotic..."

Her legs giving out, her strength seeping somewhere, Fox
collapsed and crawled her way to the edge between the arrow-looped merlons, and
touched to the triumph of cool, fitted stone.
She could feel where the winds crawled upwards along the Eyrie, the
monolith of steel and glass disrupting the natural ocean airstreams and causing
chaos within the sky.

On some nights, when the conditions were just right, mist
would spill through the crenellation pushed up by the wayward drafts, and coat
the courtyard in a cool, saline vapor, slithering across the cobbles.

Her joints screaming, Fox struggled up onto the parapet, and
held herself as steady as possible as each protean current dared their
counterparts to push her off into the Manhattan abyss two thousand feet
below. But ever the warrior, she
gritted and remained steady, enamored gaze focused on the city.

Everything focused on the city.

Nicole struggled to a standing position, feeling around the
nascent bump on her nose. She saw the
woman balanced on the castle wall, hospital gown whipping around a dangerously
thin form. "Hey, you want to kill
yourself?!"

Fox ignored her, instead concentrating on the sea of
crisscrossing light that seemed to stretch on for eternity, devouring the
landscape. A smile crept onto her face;
she was more at peace now than she had been for weeks.

A thousand thoughts roamed and played on her mind, David,
Alexander, they were each strong in their own right, they would survive. And hopefully, they would understand.

"Fine, you want to die, go right ahead!"

Fox raised her arms, preparing as an Olympic gymnast would
over a swimming pool, took a breath, and simply jumped off.

"Jesus..." It was
surreal, watching the redhead casually disappear below the edge. She'd seen a lot in her time reporting the
infamous circadian sin of New York, and thought herself prepared for
anything. She wasn't. "JESUS!!!"

She ran to the side and looked helplessly into the city.

Fox had become a speck against the light.

"SOMEONE HELP!!!" she screamed bloody murder,
frantically switching her gaze from the empty courtyard to where that speck was
quickly fading into the grasp of a creature miles long and wide. "JESUS CHRIST SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!!! HEEEEEELLLLPP!!!!"

****************************************

Fox couldn't hear the screaming, only the rush of wind, and
blood past her ears. The air pulled at
her skin, and threatened to tear her gown from her body. Then as the ground inescapably began to
near, the sound, the wind, the city, the people and the noise they sired, faded
into nothingness but her heartbeat.

Only the rapidly passing floors of the Eyrie measured the
speed of her descent. Otherwise, it was
like being suspended, weightless, free.
It was glorious.

The details below grew sharp, the people, stores, vehicles,
the ageless bustle of humanity going about their lives unaware she was going to
make a crater in the boulevard they walked.

She wondered if the impact would hurt, or, if, instantly,
death would overtake her.

She'd already imagined her funeral, the buzz of the wife of
David Xanatos' death making ripples through the news world. She hoped this would be front-page material,
big and bold, just as she lived her life.

And this is how she should die, on her feet, at her
choosing, meeting death in all its bluster and announcing her arrival in the
next life with a bang. A Xanatos is
coming, Fox declared silently, as the street up against the Eyrie foyer approached,
you'd better make room.

"Alexander..."

****************************************

It was a voice in his soul.
"Mommy?"

****************************************

She knew Alexander heard her. "Goodbye."

Her plunge resumed, constant, steady, gaining speed with
every foot she dropped.

But below, straining to get underneath her, something was
focused on ruining her magnificently suicidal dive.

An effeminate shape emerged from the night and between the
spires, streaking a ribbon of red from each determined eye. Slight, but agile, it aimed for the woman
plunging to her death along shimmering satin membranes that changed color in
the different angles of skyscraper light, blue to emerald to blue.

Tearing through the sky like a missile, sleek webbed wings
were pulled tight between the appendages to reduce the drag to almost
nothing. The distance narrowed.

The question of why, what happened and just how this human
came to be hurtling to her death was an uncertainty the young female supplanted
with one, burning desire to catch up to her before the street did. Narrowing in on a perpendicular line, as Fox
seemed to be reveling in the feeling of total freedom without the concern of
aerodynamics, she extended her clawed hands.

Closer.

Closer.

Then, they met.

"Ummphff!!"

The impact of body against body made a crack in the sky,
reverberating between the skyscrapers.
They grunted as the direction abruptly, excruciatingly changed, the
sheer momentum of the two thousand foot drop having transformed Fox into a
human bullet aimed for the asphalt.

With the gargoyle's webbed wings, open only with free arms
that were now wrapped around her target, she couldn't get any lift, and their
descent continued, albeit on a much different angle.

Another building loomed, ironically serving as a savior, and
they careened through a window on the sixth floor. Fortunately, the expected furniture and equipment of a full office
broke their fall in a shower of wood splinters and sparks from exploding
computers.

They both plowed deep into the office floor, and came to a
rest several meters apart.

Between the two of them, one stirred and groaned.

"Ooooohhhh..." The gargoyle
shook the cobwebs from her head, picking glass shards from her hair and a few
gouged in her skin. She'd taken the
brunt, through the window, onto the office floor, rolling, tumbling, protecting
this human from the impact and injury that would've come from their collision
with this neighboring and well-placed skyscraper.

She growled in agony as she tried to move, shooting pains
roaring through tendons on her right side.
Her shoulder, which she led with, it was dislocated.

Hobbled, one-handed, the other cradled around her stomach,
she crawled towards the woman who'd flung herself off the castle in front of
her astonished eyes. Fox was barely
moving, breathing steadily, an empty gaze looking nowhere.

"Last step's a doozy, huh?" she teased, hoping to rouse any
sort of response. "What happened?"

"I-I was...trying to kill m-myself."

Violet eyes widened at the cavalier reply. "Oh," knowing this woman and her reputation,
she couldn't tell whether or not she was joking, "ah...sorry."

The billionairess seemed oddly unappreciative at her life
being saved. "That's gratitude."

Fox struggled to rise; it was more than just the septicemia,
evidently she'd suffered injury as well.
Her breathing was labored, eyes heavy-lidded. "Gargoyles, eternally the world's finest meddlers." she seethed,
her body aflame, and fueling her anger at being so forcefully interrupted. "Didn't you think...that I wouldn't want to
be saved?"

Under the scrutiny of such intense green eyes, Rain didn't
balk. Others would've been either dead
or willing to sign away their lives, most but the creature standing five feet
at her tallest. "Never crossed my mind
for a minute."

"Yes, protect.
How...goddamned archaic." She
looked sternly at her rescuer. "You'd
at least have the decency to let a dying woman die under her own terms."

She furrowed a full-tined brow; simple text messages from
her lover didn't do true pain justice.
This woman was a mess, and proud to the point of mildly psychotic.

Light swathed their building, igniting the entire office floor
through the windows and giving shape, form and identity to indiscriminate
shadows. Rain had to block her eyes
from the probing spotlights. There were
shapes beyond, with the familiar swoosh sound of leather taming wind and
tremors running through the floor with every heavy footfall.

A glint of spun gold offered easy recognition to the first
in the building.

Desdemona breathed a sigh of relief seeing Fox still in
solid, breathing form, rather than, as they feared they'd find, thinly spread
across the parkway. Nicole had screamed
like mad to gain any sort of attention, and with the commotion Mother had
alerted a few members of the clan to give chase.

But if anything, the few gargoyles following Fox's path were
expecting a gory scene at the base of the Eyrie.

A caramel hand fell relieved to her chest. "Thank the dragon."

"Fox?!" Regal,
incensed, silhouetted by the light, David Xanatos stepped onto the threshold of
where a window used to be, and through the shards of glass without any thought
to the damage to his expensive leather heels.

The gargoyles parted to allow him access; braving their
wrath, he would've nonetheless pushed his way through.

"Are you insane?!" he yelled at her, Fox, who met his iron
gaze with one as intense. He stood over
her, glowering, then kneeled down to her level and grasped the collar of her
gown.

"What the hell do you think you're playing at?!"

"Fighting fate." came a dark tone.

"Do you want your son to see your body splattered all over
the street?!"

"I will not fade away, and become a pretentious, laughable
memory on the society page!" Fox growled.
"I won't sit in that bed and watch as my body slowly decays around me!!"

His hands clenched on her arms. "Stupid woman..."

"I will choose when and how I die!!"

He was shaking her.
"Stupid woman!"

"I am Fox Xanatos, I will choose!!" The scream echoed into the half-gutted
floor, then, with a gurgle at the back of her throat, it trailed off. They fell together, Fox cradled in the silks
and fine weave of the finest custom-made double breast. She wetted the fabric with her tears. Even now she could feel the white-hot ache
in her arteries returning as the adrenaline faded. "David...I can't live like this..."

"You have to, Fox, your resolve is my power." Though modified, or in his case expertly tailored,
his words held more truth than she'd ever realize. "Your life is my strength."

He held his wife closer, the skeleton he'd once bedded as
fine, buxom predator shifting against him.
He could feel her ribs through three layers of clothing. It was true, wasting away under the poison
somehow fed to her he hadn't fully realized how much weight Fox had shed. She'd lost so much of what she was.

In truth, part of him really didn't blame her. No one had ever succeeded, let alone even
dared, to trample a Xanatos underfoot, not even Death.

He breathed into the cant of her neck, "You exhaust me,
woman."

****************************************

With the roar of jet engines, stirring up the wisps of
surrounding cloud and making ripples in the thin layer of dust along the
stones, the clan with their robotic escorts arrived back on the courtyard
level.

The Steel Clan guardsman releasing him, Xanatos stepped
through the merlons and onto the stones.
Fox was limp in his arms, white and drained of color and strength. It would have been an alarming sight for the
uninformed, and still, even now, she appeared lifeless to anyone by quick
glance.

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap!" Nicole came tearing towards them with Pierce
just able to keep up, her voice high-pitched and nasal with her bandaged
nose. She immediately pointed at Fox
lest the blame somehow, as it almost always did being the perfect, unlikable
scapegoat, fell on her. "I couldn't do
anything, the crazy bitch just jumped off!"

"Watch who you call bitch..." Fox growled back, suddenly
coming to life.

"You almost broke my nose!!"

"It's quite all right, miss St. John," Xanatos answered, his
frictionless voice like a natural analgesic, "no one expects you to ever fully
grasp what my wife is ultimately capable of."

His feet barely touching the stones, sorcery propelling him
like adrenaline would fuel a normal human, Alexander came running out towards
his mother. Her brassy farewell had sent
him running, and if forced, he would've blown through the side of the
building. "Mommy!" he screamed. "Wa's wrong?! Wa's wrong?!"

"Nothing, Alex." his father sidetracked, trying to keep
everything still under his umbrella of control. "Everything's all right."

But the boy wouldn't believe it, not when the evidence of
his mother near motionless was staring him in the face. "No!"
A ring of dust blew out from around him. "Why's mommy out here?! Why?!!"

"Alexander!"

A hand reached down and moved all those long, intrusive
strands from Alexander's eyes. It was a
mother's touch that calmed the energies building to the inevitable peak. "It's okay, baby," Fox whispered, "mommy's
okay."

"I'm taking you to the infirmary, Fox," Xanatos said,
gesturing to doctor Pierce to follow, "and posting a guard at all times."

With an absolutely lupine and melancholic grin, Fox
continued to test her limits, "Don't you trust me, David?"

"Not after that stunt you just pulled. You're damned lucky you're still alive."

"Or cursed." she revised.
"Depends on how you look at it.
Of course, your flesh isn't decomposing."

"If all of this was simply because of wounded pride, I'm
going to be very disappointed."

The small crowd near the door parted to allow him through, just
as others were joining them through the same exterior gate. It turned into a flurry of activity. Confusion reigned, voices were high and
fusing into one another as every imaginable question was trying to be answered
all at once.

And as the smallest, Lexington was caught between them, and
seeing Fox being carried back inside in the arms of her taciturn husband,
scratched and bleeding, with Alexander trailing behind, he joined in the
collective bewilderment. "What's going
on?"

"What happened to Fox?" one voice rang out.

"She jumped off the castle." and another answered.

"Off the castle?!"

She didn't have to look hard to see him through the crowd,
his few exterior cybernetic parts gleamed an odd and entrancing gold in the
moonlight. "Lex!"

The voice was familiar, even without being filtered through
an electronic device, but here of all places he'd never expected to hear
it. Large eyes scanned the immediate
area. "Rain?"

"Lex! Over here!"

"Rain??" Lexington
found the young web-wing being gently settled to the curved, concrete bench
around the fountain by one of the Steel Clan, and scurried on all four feet
towards her. "What are you doing
here?!"

"Visiting you. And
apparently saving lives."

"I told you..."
He paused with the courtyard's most glaring eccentricity rearing up; any
loud voice would carry any conversation to any listener, unintentional or
not. He started again, prudently. "I told you I didn't want you here. With the Guild..."

"I wanted to be with you."
She reached out and traced his peregrine features, even where the
cybernetic skin merged seamlessly with his olive hide, like refreshing her
memory to better fall back on a more accurate image when parted. "E-mail, instant messaging, cellphones, it
wasn't enough. I'm sorry, but like the
rest of my species, I'm not good with long-distance relationships."

His brow purled, and his cybernetic irises flared along the
circuitry. "What about...you know..."

"Yeah,"
she answered, and would confirm his every fear, "I left a note for him saying I
came up here to spend some time with you."

"A
note."

"A
note, yes. Cowardly, but..."

He
stabbed a finger towards her. "Do you
realize...?"

She
nodded. "I'm sure right about now he's
found it, crumpled it in his very large hand, swore both my name under his
breath and then yours, then vowed to crush the little American for deflowering
his daughter."

Flashes
of yellow, angry Canadian quickly raced through his mind. Muscled, barbed, irritable, heavy-handed,
less than a night's flight away, Lexington was suddenly less concerned about
his girlfriend's safety at the hands of the Guild. "A-Are you intentionally trying to get me killed?"

"I flew for six hours straight for casual sex. If you have to deal with a very large gargoyle
with over-developed paternal instincts, well..."

"Them's the breaks, huh?" he appropriately finished her
thought with a defeated sigh, and set to stroke her arm before he realized it
was the damaged appendage.

She mewled as both an involuntary reaction and as a
warning. "Watch the arm, robotman," she
scolded, "watch the arm."

"Sorry." he smiled, hoping it would be enough for an
apology. "It's...it's good to see
you. Now what the hell's going on?"

"Fox tried to commit suicide."

His jaw dropped open.

****************************************

"She's all settled in, Mr. Xanatos."

Pierce's voice was a distant consideration. The billionaire had watched from the
distance, and like a hawk, his wife being put back to where she belonged after
her stunt, and her wounds, fortunately small and far from threatening, suitably
dressed. "Mm hm."

But the doctor was more concerned about his hospital being
turned into a police state, with Steel Clan guards posted at both doors to
Fox's private suite and Mother on constant watch. His infirmary was the last untouched bastion of any control he
had, of any safe haven without the visible indications of the war currently
being fought.

He grimaced, and nodded his chin towards the sentries. "Those machines going to be here long?"

"Twenty four hours a day." Xanatos answered
stone-faced. "Until Fox is cured, or
we're forced to chain her to that bed."

"You have to see it from her side. If it were you lying in that bed, dying, and as proud as
she is, you'd have the same feelings.
Frailty, depression, watching everything of yourself, a Xanatos of all
people, wither until you simply crumble, and vanish."

"If it were me in that bed, Fox would try anything in
her power to ensure I wouldn't venture my life so thoughtlessly." He took a breath under Egyptian silk, his
chest slowly inflating, and then falling twice as fast. It was an animal's snort, rife with the
swelter of exhaustion. "Only fools
measure pride over their lives."

Pierce stood alongside him, feigning concentration on his
patient fiddling with the tubes and wires plugged back into her. But a few of those wretched thoughts were
swimming, and trickling down to his mouth and the tip of his tongue; they were
yearning to be voiced, and he was playing with a man that could have him
killed, dumped and everything he is vanished from the public eye in less than a
night. "I'm sure you've heard what
happened with Delilah's baby." he mentioned, trying to keep his tone informal.

It was after all, just a simple conversation.

"My son was meddling where he shouldn't have been, yes."

"If what he pulled off wasn't a damned miracle, I'd be
inclined to offer some parental advice."

Xanatos turned, and pushed him against the doorjamb with a
sideways glare. He thought the doctor
pretentious for his rank. "And just
what advice could you possibly offer me?"

"Well, I'm sure with all the drudgery of running a
multinational corporation and dealing with your wife, you've forgotten you
watch your son." he deadpanned. "I
suppose I don't have to tell you the power he wields is dangerous without
constant supervision."

Xanatos turned back, to where Alexander was fussing over his
mother. "No, doctor, you do not."

"Even someone as magically illiterate as I am, even I can
see he's growing in skill to match the sheer reserves he has..."

The billionaire, and hence his employer held up a hand, a
simple gesture to most, but with David Xanatos, it implied total silence. "Doctor Pierce," his tone was saturnine,
"please...do the job you were hired for, and do not step outside those
bounds." He allowed a pause between
them, for his words to sink in and his context to linger. Then, "Are we understood?"

Pierce crossed his arms.
"Perfectly."

"Trust me, doctor," father and son met each their glare from
across the room, iron and emerald, defiance making sparks as would a sword
scraping granite, "Alexander won't be causing you any more problems. He will be disciplined."

****************************************

Epilogue,
somewhere just outside of Newark

The epicenter of downtown New York had already faded to a
few simple spires on the horizon.

An older woman, her face a roadmap of a hard life, etched
with lines denoting every year, curled up near the tailgate against another,
watching the buildings diminish into homes and then into rural areas, leaving
behind that distant, shimmering monstrosity that had robbed her of her dignity.

Her small group huddled in the back of a pick-up truck and
the crude shelter of it's fiberglass canopy, swathed in rags and piecemeal
blankets, heading west on the 280 out of Manhattan and through New Jersey. They'd paid the driver with what little they
were able to scrape together to take them as far as possible.

They'd lived in the shadows for the past three weeks, trying
to survive, and sheltering their new and confused discovery from prying eyes of
rescue workers offering aid to the homeless throughout the damaged sections of
the city.

The unseen, the downtrodden, living on the scraps the rest
of Manhattan threw out, they'd suffered the worst with the blow to the city's
social structure. Shelters were
hard-pressed to keep up with the thousands of recently homeless, hospitals
overloaded with the wounded and malaise.

Thus, out of necessity, some were forced to leave.

Her companion shifted, and she shushed her, hoping to keep
her out of sight and mind from the driver and his well-used rear mirror.

Poor thing, the old woman thought, a blank slate. True, the newest addition to their small
family was strange in appearance, and had lost everything of what and who she
was, but it just reinforced their bond.
They were both forsaken, and found solace in the kindred. The others were naturally wary to accept the
physical interpretation of every rumor they'd feared in every dark alleyway,
but their de facto leader had quelled any doubt of her threat.

Using her knuckles, she gently prodded underneath the
restive woman's hood, pulled down to disguise such alien features. Gently rising horns burst from her forehead
and through her bangs, spiraled and antler-beige, and wings, caped around her
shoulders beneath the cowl and cape.

Orange like the dusk sky, lissome, ethereal, and
tight-lipped, the young female appeared a statue, until she shifted her eyes
towards the intruder under her cloak.

"You awlright, dearie?"

"Fine." she answered, her voice an abstract of emotion and
thought. She focused her dark gaze to
the woman's, and they shared a half-smile.

"Cold?"

"No. Temperature is
a constant one hundred one point six degrees Fahrenheit."

The old woman nodded, and left the creature to her
thoughts. "Awlright."

The gargoyle rubbed her talons along the hollow in her
forehead as she often did, as if it would stimulate a random memory. But, maddeningly, there was nothing but
cerebral ghosts and faint impressions that didn't offer much except to further
the mystery of her identity.

Her metal form damaged in the battle with Sobek's magically
created deities, the dent in her skull remained even when she turned back to
flesh with the dying of the light. It
was pressing against her brain, affecting memory. Her uniquely constructed bloodcells couldn't repair it, or, if
they were succeeding, it was far too slow a process.

The truck hit a rough patch of road, and the ensuing shudder
through the threadbare truck jarred her from her thoughts. The landscape had transformed from silver to
mottled green. "Where are we going,
Sophie?"

"Out of this place, dearie." the old woman replied, rubbing
her hand against her young charge's taloned appendage. "Towards a better life."

She looked past Sophie, wistful eyes against the last
building to slip beneath the skyline.
She couldn't help wonder, that city had felt so unfamiliar, large and
suffocating, but something, something she couldn't identify scratching at the
inside of her soul had screamed at her not to leave. "A better life."

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